Washington urged to allow women raped by ISIS to get US-aided abortions

Women raped by the Islamic State and other terror groups are not allowed access to US federal aid to get an abortion because of a decades-old law. Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders are calling on President Obama to change the legislation.

It's the Helms
amendment, which was drafted 42 years ago, that forbids US
foreign aid money from funding abortion “as a method of
family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice
abortion.”

But a group
of prominent human rights and faith leaders, joined together by
the Center for Health and Gender Equality (CHANGE), argue that
women who have been raped by terrorists aren't asking to end
their pregnancies for “family planning purposes,” The
Washington Post reported.

On its website, CHANGE has accused the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) of consistently misinterpreting
“the Helms language to exclude funding for abortion services
where it is not used as a method of family planning such as in
the case of rape.”

CHANGE and the group of leaders have called on President Barack
Obama to issue an executive order making government aid available
for abortions in the case of rape and incest.

“President Obama has spoken compassionately about women and
girls raped in war and conflict, but has failed to act on that
compassion,” the group said in a June 4 news conference.

Obama has indeed repeatedly spoken
about woman and girls being raped in global conflicts. In a
September 2014 address about Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL),
he said the group's fighters “enslave, rape, and force women
into marriage.”

One month later, during a speech at the United Nations, he said
that “mothers, sisters, daughters have been subjected to rape
as a weapon of war.”

But Obama's critics maintain that the president has not acted on
his words.

“We are asking for the president not to put politics ahead of
women,” CHANGE president Serra Sippel said.

The coalition of religious and human rights leaders met for a
summit at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington DC last week,
just steps away from the White House.

In an effort to state the group's position before the event, one
leader cited the kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian girls by
Boko Haram last year – many of whom were raped.

“People are horrified by the news about the girls who were
kidnapped by Boko Haram,” said Central Conference of
American Rabbis President Denise Eger, who attended the summit.

“But we have the power of our
nation to actually do something to save those girls and to
provide the medical care they need, the health care they need,
the reproductive care they need,” Eger said.

However, some believe any change in the amendment should be
debated by Congress, due to the controversial nature of abortion.

“I would urge these particular religious leaders who are
calling for overseas abortions to be paid for by the American
taxpayers to donate their own money,” said Eric Scheidler,
executive director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League.
He also urged them “not to look to abortion as an answer to
the problem of rape.”

Meanwhile, the White House has referred questions about the Helms
amendment to USAID.

Benjamin Edwards, a spokesman for
the agency, refused to respond directly to the issue of abortion
funding, but said the administration takes the issue
“extremely seriously,” The New York Times
reported.

This is not the first time the coalition has urged the Obama
administration to make changes to the Helms amendment.

Last year, CHANGE and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive
Choice helped send a letter to the president, which was signed by
33 religious leaders and women's advocates.

The letter stated that it is “unacceptable – and in fact
immoral – for our nation to continue to apply the Helms Amendment
incorrectly.”

Sex atrocities committed by ISIS are a reality, their crimes
exposed in a UN report last month. The report stated that fighters
buy children as sex slaves and force them into marriage. Girls
from Iraq and Syria told an official that they were stripped,
sold and made to undergo more than a dozen virginity reparation
surgeries.

An April report from Human Rights Watch told a similar story,
providing the accounts of Yazidi women and girls who had been
subjected to “systematic rape and other sexual violence”
by ISIS. One of the girls mentioned was only 12 years old.

In December, ISIS
released a sex slavebrochurewhich outlined how to capture,
punish and rape female non-believers. It also justified child
rape.